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How Alternative Education Can Help Bridge The Skills Gap

It’s no secret that companies struggle with finding the right talent. There’s a shortage of skills, top executives say, and employer demand outpaces the labor supply. With a U.S. unemployment rate that’s hovering at 8%, the trend is both puzzling and troubling — people need work, but jobs are going unfilled. The problem, according to a McKinsey & Company study, begins with education.

The solution to the skills gap is not as simple as going back to school. Advanced degrees and specialized certificate programs are becoming increasingly difficult for workers to afford.

“For more than two decades, colleges and universities across the country have been jacking up tuition at a faster rate than costs have risen on any other major product or service — four times faster than the overall inflation rate and faster even than increases on the price of gasoline or healthcare,” Penelope Wang wrote for CNN Money. “The result: After adjusting for financial aid, the amount families pay for college has skyrocketed 439% since 1982.”

Structured education models do not necessarily yield the skills that young employees and businesses need to grow.

“In summary, the ‘conventional path’ has become so narrow, that it hard even exists,” wrote Bleacher Report’s Bryan Goldberg for Pando Daily. “You can’t just go to grad school and ‘become’ anything: a lawyer, a banker, a doctor, a journalist, a manager.”

If degree programs are falling short in equipping new workers with high-demand skills, where should employees and executives turn for a mutually beneficial solution?

Technology Is the Portal to Opportunity

A recent Skillsoft poll found that 90% of CEOs “will either maintain or increase their training budgets” over the next year. But the solution might actually be simpler and significantly more cost-effective — even free. Just look to today’s emerging tech trends in education.

Key technology leaders are striving to increase access to education through low-cost or free peer-to-peer and open-source models. Through ventures like Coursera, top universities like Stanford University, the University of Washington and the University of Maryland are hosting courses in finance, business, computer programming, data analysis and math — free of charge.

Founded by computer scientist and Stanford professor Sebastian Thrun, tech startup Udacity has built an entire business model around the concept of free education in math, science and technology. Employees can learn high-demand skills like the Python programming language, software testing, statistics and web development from anywhere in the world, at any time of day.

“Usually I reach about 200 students and now I reach 160,000,” said Thrun in a quote for CNN, about launching his first online course. “In my entire life of education I didn’t have as much an impact on people as I had in these two months.”

To resolve the skills gap, employers need to support employees in forging their own educational paths. Take software engineer Natasha Murashev as an example. Having never touched a line of code, she decided to learn how to program in 2011. Armed with a strong academic foundation in psychology from Northwestern University, she self-studied Stanford University’s open source Introduction to Computer Science course, practiced her skills through hobby projects, and completed a 10-week intensive program in programming best practices.

“She studied psychology, worked at the FBI, tried a stint in marketing, and only in the last two years pursued a tech career,” wrote Beth Devin of Manilla for The Jane Dough. “What’s special about Natasha is that she did not give up. It was not a direct path, but after trying different learning techniques, asking for help, and leveraging technology community resources, Natasha is now happily employed as a software developer.”

School may have equipped Murashev with a passion for learning, but it’s alternative education that helped her piece together the tech skills for a high-yield career change.

Preparing for Evolving Needs

To stay a step ahead of the talent supply shortage, executives need to support alternative education models. Strategic partnerships with companies like Udacity can help connect recruiters with highly skilled candidates. HR departments can encourage employees to complete free courses by facilitating study groups and hosting lectures.

Community plays a large role in alleviating the skills gap — the key is to put down archaic textbooks to start looking at talent more holistically.

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Business needs to take the long view with education. If kids become advanced readers and sophisticated writers, they can learn anything. If their reading and writing skills are mediocre, you are pretty much spitting in the wind to try to get them to learn advanced concepts.

It’s easy to turn kids into advanced readers and writers. Schools need to make developing a love of reading a priority. Kids learn literacy skills by racing through book after book after book. There isn’t any shortcut.

Too bad schools are going in the opposite direction now. Business leaders need to speak up and say they don’t care if kids are exposed to multi-cultural myths, and learn jargon like “stanza.” Schools need to make free-choice reading a major part of their curriculum.

You are absolutely right and I believe is the ultimate and best solution to develop children fully cognitive and learning abilities. Reading promotes the intelligence, imagination, and creativity. After all, most of the searches that are made regarding the association between reading and intelligence; they bring reading as the key contributor for high performance at intelligence’s tests. In addition, honestly I wonder why the government and schools, as well, are tolerate and uninteresting and uncaring at all these indisputable facts and evidence.

Skills gaps are emerging throughout the economy, and one primary solution that’s proven to make a difference in helping the economy thrive is investing in career and technical education (CTE). CTE programs, whether at the secondary, post-secondary or other educational level, boost student achievement and deliver increased career and earning potential. CTE also produces workers for the open jobs of today, and boosts business productivity and economic status as a result. These programs are extra successful when employers participate in their development and execution.

The Industry Workforce Needs Council is a new organization of businesses working together to spotlight skills gaps and advocate/kick off CTE programs that work to curb the problem. For more information, or to join the effort, visit http://www.iwnc.org.

Hats off to Stanford University! I would like to see Alternative Education delve into its very own Human Resource of students working, for high school credit, on a daily basis, reading to the early childhood group. Thus improving the reading skills of both generations while helping to prepare for the effective use of online technology.